politics

God, i should really know better than to open up Metafilter just before i’m ready to put a post to bed. As if there’s not gonna be any interesting links at MeFi. Nope, never happens.

We’ll start with the easy stuff. This map scares the shit out of me. Red areas are concentrations of Democrats, blue of Republicans. It scares me ’cause:

A) Aside from that one odd spot in South Dakota i don’t even see any heavy red marks

B) Good grief, looking at it this way i can see the logic behind thinking that liberals are really a tiny, mostly coastal and urban voice that’s screwing things up for everyone else. Ahhh, bask in the self-loathing.

C) Electoral College results seem almost inevitable if you assume most Americans are partisan voters.

Schelling’s research with artificially constructed societies informs us that like prefers like. Seems elementary, you might think. Yes, it’s elementary if every citizen wants to live somewhere where 80% of their neighbors are similar to themselves — so long as they don’t specify what demographic the other 20% should be made up of, they’re most likely just going to wind up in a big 100% block of homogeneity.

The revelation (for me, at least), is that even if you say “i’ll be happy if just half of my neighbors are similar to me” you will eventually become a part of a stratified neighborhood that looks a lot like the scary map (see figure 2 in the article, via another MeFi thread). Of course, most people think of halfway immersing themselves with a different race, culture, or political viewpoint makes them incredibly open minded. And, furthermore, who doesn’t want to find at least one out of two faces to be sympathetic? Still, it says very significant things about human psychology, the basic nature of discrimination, and maybe even why Democrats can only win certain southern states.

Good lord, that took forever. Maybe we’ll let that be a post all by itself. Yes. The other dozen links soon to follow.

Good lord i accumulated a lot of links while i was doing homework last night. Old-me would hoard them like the squirrel that fell through Lindsay’s bedroom ceiling, but new-me just wants to get them out there so that i can find more! Cause i am a WEBLOGGER. I LOG the WEB.

(Sorry, i had to explain that to a stupified class of Communications majors yesterday. At least my professor actively mocked them.)

How real is American Idol? An excellent report on The Motown Episode remarks on the (sometimes huge) difference in sound between seeing a live taping and watching the show on television. I wish there was a reliable source that provided this kind of analysis every week.

Why am i not still reading more miserable crap every day? Oh, wait, i am. Lisa, oh Lisa, when will our weekly lunches resume? Probably in July. By-the-by, When i add you to the sidebar again, you will be listed as Libertine Seahag.

I generally don’t know what the fuck is going on on my Primary Ballot after i get past the bit about Senators, which is why The Committee of Seventy is a good thing — a century-old Philadelphia political watchdog group that tracks and explains the ballot. This came to light as i found out that, apparently, a fellow high school thespian of mine is running to be the Representative for Center City, abetted by fellow fellow thespian Ariel. The man is Andrew Hohns, and i’m linking him because i think it’s sad that an article about how his opponent has the gayborhood locked up currently tops his domain in google rank.

I’m not even going to touch this whole hilariously disgusting Margaret Cho thing because it’s on, like, every blog on the planet. The comments mailed to Ms. Cho churned my stomach, which seems to be a fairly standard reaction, but Mykeru made me feel a little better about it. I especially like the bit about the “witless ditto monkeys;” i often feel like there are no stark raving crazy liberal politico bloggers out there because i spent so much time last year in shock and awe of all the pro-war-hawks and their Uruk-Hai like ditto-monkey followers. That’s what so many people are these days. I could take a whole year just to talk about politics and the media and how mislead we are on a daily basis, but that’s not why i’m here. I just wish people understood the choices they were making, and could diversify a little bit as to not just follow the same thing all of the time.

Anyhow, just as soon as you print out a State of the Union scorecard you can consider me mum on the matter. I don’t even find the meta making fun of the people who make fun of the people who make fun of G.W. thing at all hilarious. Not even a touch.

Well, that’s actually the most positive spin i’ve seen put on this whole George W. thing yet. We’re less than a week away now, aren’t we? I sorta forgot about him… i suppose i was waiting for him to fade away or something. No such luck, eh?

Was Lincoln gay?… wow, one politely inquires into a single queer topic on the internet and is suddenly mired in a web of accusations that just about every 1 in 10 important male historical figures was gay. Cool.

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